


The system

by LittleSofie



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, I try to be funny but I don't think I'm really good at it, Oneshot, Who even read these anyway?, i should be studying, i'm not really good with tags, just some fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 22:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15895818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSofie/pseuds/LittleSofie
Summary: Jillian Holtzmann categorized women into boxes, that system worked very well to keep Holtzmann’s heart from breaking. Until stupid Erin Gilbert came and burned all her boxes down and all that was left was a sad pile of ashes.





	The system

**Author's Note:**

> I've been reading so much work from this fandom I couldn't keep myself from writing one. Hope you like it :)
> 
> And I'm sorry for the grammatical errors I missed.

As you probably know dear reader, being a woman who loves women is not always easy. Besides all the homophobia/biphobia and exclusion out there, most of us also have to deal with falling in love with our friends. And most of those friends are straight; or just don’t like us back, which is kind of worse. For women who love women that line between friendship and romance is very, very, messy. Holtzmann learned that lesson the hard way when she fell in love with beautiful Gabriella in high school. And After losing both her best friend and what she thought was the love of her life she came up with a system. 

Jillian Holtzmann categorized women into boxes. There were the ‘straight women I don’t like’ box, where she had put Jennifer Lynch; the ‘straight women I like’ box, where Patty lived; the ‘queer women I like but only as a friend’ box in which she lovingly had put Abby; the ‘queer women I want to fuck’, no one stayed there for very long; the ‘queer woman I want to date’ that one was empty since her last girlfriend had broken her heart; there was the equally empty box: ‘the girlfriend’ (we don’t like to talk about it); and the one she had lovingly created for Erin Gilbert: the ‘straight friend that I like to flirt with’ box. 

That system was great and worked very well keeping Holtzmann’s heart from breaking. Until stupid Erin Gilbert came to burn all her boxes down only leaving a sad pile of ashes. It was a few months after they started working together. In that fateful day Erin had come up to her floor asking for Holtz to fix a minor problem with her proton gun, she happily obliged. 

“Here, all done, hotstuff” She said taking off her gloves and pushing up her glasses to give Erin her signature wink + smug smile combo.

Erin smiled back. At the back of her mind, she noticed it was a different smile (a flirty smile?), but Holtzmann put that thought away. 

She should’ve known better. 

“Thanks, Jillian” Erin put her hand in Holtzmann’s arm and squeezed lightly. At that point, there were explosions happening in her brain. Then Erin winked at her. That’s right, not only was Erin flirting with Holtzmann, she had also stolen her move. That’s a low blow Erin Gilbert. Low Blow.

Holtzmann stood there staring at nothing for a good couple of minutes, her mind was having a hard time processing what happened. After she came to her senses Erin wasn’t there anymore, neither was her proton gun. For a moment she thought she had dreamed everything, after all, she really did need some sleep and had a really creative mind. But she could still feel Erin’s hand in her tingling arm, and the sound of Erin’s voice saying her first name echoed in her mind. 

But Erin was straight! Wasn’t she? Oh, maybe she is one of those vicious straight girls that like flirting with queer woman to feel better about themselves. But Gilbert’s not like that. She’s a decent straight. Isn’t she? 

She needed to sort this out. As she came down to the first floor through the fire pole she realized it was late, everyone was gone except Gilbert who didn’t look away from her computer as she heard the loud thud from Holtz’s arrival. She was sitting at her desk probably engrossed by an article about the properties of ectoplasm or something. Holtzmann walked up to her, shutting down her notebook and shoving it to the side to sit where it previously laid on top of Erin’s desk.  


“Well, that was rude!” Gilbert exclaimed frowning. She pushed her chair away from the desk to put some space between her and Holtzmann, with a light blush in her cheeks. Seems like the tables have turned...

“You called me Jillian, and then you squeezed my arm. AND YOU WINKED AT ME.” Holtz threw her arms up to emphasize her exasperation. 

“Huumm… I diiid. And?” Erin looked at her with an eyebrow up and a shrug.

“And you were flirting with me Gilbert. FLIRTING” 

“You flirt with me all the time, Jillian.”

“And there it is again!” She exclaimed frustrated. “You can’t flirt with me Gilbert. Stop.”

“Why not?”

“Because it gets me all kinds of confused. I will think you want to date me or something.”

“And you can flirt with me?”

“Of course I can.”

“So you can flirt with me, and I can’t flirt back?”

“Unless you want to do me or something.” She regretted her word choice but Erin didn’t seem to mind. A smug smile appeared on her face, which made Holtzmann even more frustrated. This is serious business, Gilbert. 

“So you can flirt with me. And I can’t flirt back unless I want to ‘do you or something’.” She put air quotes around the last part of the sentence. 

“Yes!”

“Okay.” Erin nodded in sign of understanding.

“Thank you, Erin” She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. All her boxes were in order again, and Erin Gilbert was back where she belongs. 

Except she wasn’t. 

It happened again the next day when Erin complemented the way she held Holtz’s proton gun. And the other day when Erin said she thought the way Jillian’s mind worked was sexy as she touched her shoulder lightly. She also kept calling her Jillian, but only when no one else was hearing it; that automatically made Holtzmann think of Erin saying her first name in other contexts, and that just made her feel things down there she shouldn’t be feeling about her straight co-worker. Oh god, and the winking. That winking did things to Jillian. And now she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Well, shit.

Fuking Gilbert. Who does she think she is? 

Holtzmann now felt like she was back in high school, nervous, confused (and maybe in love). She didn’t know where to put Erin anymore. First of all, she was definitely not at the ‘straight friends that I like to flirt with’ box. Straight women don’t wink like that. Was she at the ‘queer woman I like but only as a friend’ box? Holtzmann was not a big fan of that idea. Which left her two boxes: The ‘queer woman I want to fuck’ box and ‘the queer woman I want to date’ box. There laid her confusion. Did she want to just fuck Gilbert, or did she want to date her? If she was honest with herself, she knew the answer already. She just didn’t like it at all, but she was starting to begrudgingly accept that she was falling for Erin Gilbert. And that made her feel like her heart could break at any second. 

And now, every time she wasn’t with Gilbert she was thinking of her. And just before she came to work in the morning, or any moment she knew she was about to see Erin, her palms started to sweat and her heart to beat faster, a lump forming in her throat. But when she was with Erin she usually forgot about the rest of the world. She still flirted with Erin, after all that was practically part of her daily routine. But when Erin was the one doing the flirting, her brain just shut down completely and she was reduced to a babbling mess. 

**

Erin liked Holtzmann. From the first time they’ve met, she had a good impression of the quirky engineer. But she hadn’t realized she liked liked Holtzmann until months after they were working together. She had suddenly come to the realization that she was falling for Jillian Holtzmann the day she caught herself staring for five minutes at a picture the blonde had just posted on Instagram. She was holding the latest model of the proton gun with a proud smile on her face, exposing those damn dimples. She was wearing her usual overalls and a cropped top. Those stupid cropped tops that made Erin wonder what kind of sounds Jillian would make if she ran her tongue through her stomach. Oh. OH. Fuck. 

Erin had always had difficulties flirting with women, the majority of women she had been with had approached her, not the other way around. Even with men, she was not a very accomplished flirt. But it was a bit easier because men didn’t expect her to advance on them anyway. 

However, she knew that if she wanted to date Jillian. She had to actually do something about it. She was a grown 40-year-old woman and didn’t have much patience for the slow burn back and forth; if it was any other situation she would straight up ask Holtz on a date. In her life, Erin Gilbert had grown accustomed to rejection and was not very afraid of it any more than she was afraid of ghosts. But the Ghostbusters were a tight group, a well-oiled machine and if any screw was out of place the machine could explode. And she loved the Ghostbusters more than anything in the world. That's why she was afraid of making a bold move, it could make things unbearably awkward between them. 

So she resorted to not so subtly (but subtly enough) hit on Jillian. 

Jillian. She loved how her first name rolled off her tongue and occupied her mind.

But apparently, Jillian didn’t want her to. 

What was throwing her off was that the engineer still flirted with her frequently. However, she seemed uncomfortable when Erin flirted back. Was she doing it wrong? 

That’s why in that saturday evening Erin Gilbert was knocking on her colleague’s door.

The woman who opened the door definitely did not look like the Jillian Holtzmann she was used to. Her hair was not in her usual updo, it was in a messy ponytail, her face was free of her usual yellow glasses and she wore some boy shorts and a tank top. “Erin? What are you doing here?” Jillian looked at Erin stunned like she was caught off guard. She looked vulnerable. 

You see my lovely reader, in that instant, Erin had just fallen in love with Jillian Holtzmann a second time. Or maybe she had fallen in love for the first time with this side of her. Anyway, she understandably took a while to respond. “I… huumm… I’m sorry...” She was feeling like she crossed a line, she was invading Holtzmann’s privacy uninvited. She looked to the floor and muttered: “I shouldn't have come here”. As she was turning back to leave a warm hand wrapped around her wrists, pulling her back. 

“No, stay. Come in.” A shy smile made its way across Jillian’s face. She still looked nervous, but Erin felt like it was a good kind of nervous like the butterflies that have been dancing inside her own stomach for a while now. 

She stepped into Holtzmann’s living room and it was at the same time everything and nothing like she had imagined it. It seemed fairly clean, there was no sign of a dead rat or spoiled food anywhere. It was tastefully decorated, the walls were a nice shade of light green, the furniture was mostly made of hardwood. The space was a bit messy tough, here and there some part of a machine laid, a few sheets of paper with sketches of new ideas and some random tools on the floor. But the leather couch she sat beside Jillian was clean and free of clutter. 

“Do you want something to drink?” Holtzman asked, breaking the awkward silence. 

“No, thanks,” Erin replied. After a few beats, she said “I guess I should explain why I came here.”

“I guess you should.”

“I have been flirting with you for a while now... I suppose you’ve noticed” she laughed nervously. Jillian only nodded. Erin continued. “And I’m not sure if you like it or not... I guess after our conversation I felt like you might correspond my feelings for you... So I decided to keep flirting. And I guess you don’t? Because you’ve been acting weird and uncomfortable when I do. But you also keep flirting with me sometimes, which gets me pretty confused... I’m here to clear things up, so we can be on the same page. And if you don’t like me back that’s ok. I will be sad, but it’s not your fault or anything, and I’ll get over it and...”

“Erin do you want to go on a date with me?” Jillian asked before she had time to think too much about it. 

Erin looked at her confused for a second before she smiled shyly “Yes. Yes, I do!” 

Jillian grinned back “Ok good.”

They stayed quiet for a few seconds, just smiling at each other. But then Erin came to her senses and a furious blush appeared on her face as she realized how potentially awkward was this moment. 

“I think I should go home now.” 

“Huuumm yes, sure! Let me walk you out.” Holtz jumped up excited, not seeming to mind the inherent awkwardness of the situation. 

“When do you want to go out?” Erin asked as Jillian was opening the door. 

“Are you free tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, sure!”

“Ok, I’ll text you with the details then.” 

“Ok, bye!” The last thing she sees before the door closes is Jillian’s grin. 

As she was turning away Erin imagined what it will be like to kiss those beautiful lips. How soft and warm they must be. She wondered what they might taste like. She stopped walking. What was she doing? Those lips were right there! She could’ve kissed those lips!

Holtzmann opens the door justs as Erin goes to knock on it. They don’t wait a second before they start kissing hungrily, it’s not a long time before all the clothes are on the floor and the neighbors start hearing moans. 

***

“Have you done this before? I mean, with women.” Holtzmann said after she came down from her high. If Erin hadn’t she would be convinced the physicist was some kind of sex goddess because Erin just made it in her ‘10 best orgasms of my life’ list. Yes, she had that list. 

“Of course I have! Are you surprised?” Erin said moving to her side to face Jillian who laid on her back. Her beautiful face only illuminated by the light from the corridor coming through the open bedroom door. She could see the sweat that accumulated just above the other woman’s eyebrows. She wanted to kiss those eyebrows. She didn’t, but she smiled at the fact that she could have. 

“A little bit.”

“What? You thought you were my bisexual awakening?” Erin frowned. 

“I kind of hoped so…” She said sheepishly.

Erin snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself Holtzmann, I’ve been out to my friends since I was 19. You were what? Like, 12?”

“13.”

“So I guess I have been fucking women longer than you’ve been out.” she said smugly. 

“Oh shut up Gilbert, it’s not a competition. And I could have been out when I was 13!”

“Were you?”

“No, but everybody kind of knew.”

“That doesn’t count.” Erin said lying again on her back. After a while Jillian moved to straddle Erin, lowering her body so they’re faces were a few inches away from each other. She looked at Erin with a smirk on her face. “What?” Erin asked. 

The engineer started lightly tracing a pattern on Erin’s chest, her neck, her jaw. “Now I think it’s kind of hot you have been dating women for that long.” the corner of her mouth twitched up and her eyes turned dark. 

Erin chuckled, “You make me sound so old.”

“I would say experienced.” She didn’t give Erin time to respond before she was kissing her. 

What about their first date? You might wonder, my dear reader. Don’t worry, they’ll have plenty of time for that later.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure if I should include that last dialogue, but I would write it anyway. And why let it go to waste? So I did, even if it was a little out of place ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
